I won an HD TV last year and did the dutiful thing: I upgraded my receiver, upgraded other components, and went with HDMI to connect as much as possible. It took more than a bit of work to get a set of components that would talk to each other, but now that it's all done, I'm a happy camper. Well, that is I'm a happy camper until sometime after the sun goes down, and it's my family that's unhappy more than me.

My system is in my living room. No media room here. My eight-year-old's room is on the other side of the wall everything is on. Our own bedroom is the opposite direction of most all the speakers, and down a dogleg hall, the sound of the TV down low still finds its way strongly down the hallway at night.

What I think AVRs are missing is the "pass-through" button so that you can let your HDMI signal and sound go up to the TV without having to drive the AVR's speakers. It would probably save a lot of electricity, too: powering 5.1 at 100 watts / channel can't be helpful to one's electric bill at these energy-conscious times!

I have a Denon 2308, but before when I was trying to get everything to work right I had a 2307 and had a Sony unit for a short time, and I didn't find any way to do this with HDMI in any of those systems. I don't know if anyone does this, but it sure would be a good function to add.

John

JerryDelColliano

02-03-2008 10:34 AM

Re: The "Dark" Side of Going All HDMI

How about some wireless headphones for night time use?

In expensive and effective

TheMoose

02-03-2008 10:46 AM

Re: The "Dark" Side of Going All HDMI

Welcome to the forums!

Couldn't you just turn the AVR volume to zero & use the TV speakers?
The HDMI cable carries both audio & video so you should have the signal going to your TV speakers.

The wireless headphones would probably work better though since you could still crank the volume & not bother anyone else.

JohnJ

02-03-2008 10:54 AM

Re: The "Dark" Side of Going All HDMI

I've thought about it, and I can't see doing it personally - it's a comfort thing, and I'm a headphone user from way back. I just think the manufacturers are missing a good piece of functionality. The 2308 has a Night Mode setting that tries in some ways to accomplish the same thing, but the truth is the TVs tend to have more than adequate sound for the night time, and just allowing that sound signal to pass through when the rest of the speakers are shut off would be good policy. Hell, it would let them all have an eco feature to offset running a 7x100 watt system!

How about this posit: there are more wasted watts of electricity running the full speaker set of an AVR in one late night of quiet listening than all the vampire charger devices in your home for a week. I've no idea if it's true, but the idle charger for my Motorola phone and the Dell converter for my sleeping laptop can't be sucking down *that* much electricity over the course of a day! Nor can the clock on my microwave.

John

JohnJ

02-03-2008 11:25 AM

Re: The "Dark" Side of Going All HDMI

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheMoose
(Post 10550)

Welcome to the forums!

Couldn't you just turn the AVR volume to zero & use the TV speakers?
The HDMI cable carries both audio & video so you should have the signal going to your TV speakers.

The wireless headphones would probably work better though since you could still crank the volume & not bother anyone else.

I'd never thought of playing with the two volumes. That would be a workable solution. Now, the question I would ask is this: are channels with 0 output volume still consuming continuous watts of power even though there is no output?

Alas, the maddening joy of trying to work through settings! This seems like an interesting solution, but my TV speakers don't seem to be working at all, and I don't know why! Can't find any setting in the TV that says they aren't on, and still can't find a way to get them talking again. It doesn't appear to be the Denon - setting it to run the sound to the TV instead of AMP doesn't make the TV start talking either. Probably another lost evening wandering through the Aquos and Denon manuals...... :(

John

kennyt

02-03-2008 01:37 PM

Re: The "Dark" Side of Going All HDMI

JohnJ,

I would thing the Denon would still pass the audio signal and allow you to use the TV's speakers, though they might not solve your problem as volume is still volume and likely if it bothers others now, similar volume from the TV speakers will likely still bother them.

They do make some good wireless headphones, I think if you really want to control noise that is the best bet.